(no subject)

[frobzwiththingz]

In anything but the most trivial of electronic/robotics projects, it is impossible to overestimate the amount of time you will spend making cables and connectors.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

oh, but standards will simplify all of that. here's another!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

"the network is the robot"

[starphire.livejournal.com]

I feel like there's likely a connection between this observation and the fact that there's apparently steady business in this country for companies which do nothing but make custom wiring harnesses for OEMs...

Thus, I was particularly impressed with the scratch-built approach at one Chinese contract manufacturer I visited - on a ground floor, reels of thick copper wire being pulled through successive dies until hair-thin, then tinned, then continuously being twisted together and coated with PVC, then printed, all in one continuous flow. Adjacent, a similar line turning these wires into jacketed cables, then sent upstairs to cut and terminate, then to the overmold machines and into bins to go next door, where these and the output of several other buildings doing similarly specialized operations from raw materials came together, for final assembly into a consumer product. Because they experienced frequent power cuts from the grid, it was worthwhile to run onsite diesel generators as needed, at 3X the electricity cost, so the wire-building operations wouldn't ever lose power mid-spool - at any one time, several hundred feet of wire was stretched out across the factory floor on each of several lines, before they even reached the take-up spool.

Um, I guess my point is that you could have it worse...

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

similarly with sanding and priming for painting.

[blackanvil.livejournal.com]

True, of course as a network engineer, that's sometimes my job. The hardest part is that most cable manufacturers use colors that I just cannot differentiate between, especially brown and green, which as far as I can tell are identical. I am hopeful that I can get a decent workaround in the near future -- I've been playing with some apps that use a phone's camera and screen to adjust colors to counter different types of colorblindness. Combine that with a HUD or lightweight virching glasses, might make a big difference.